Harbor Freight 3 Ton Floor Jack Failure WARNING!!

About a year ago, I purchased a 3 ton roll around floor jack for my shop to replace a 30 year old Sears jack that experienced a broken casting cam. While working under my Taurus yesterday, I heard a squeal from the hydraulic cylinder and the car started to drop. Fortunately, I had placed a jackstand under the frame as a safety precaution or the car would have come down on my chest. I twisted the handle to ensure I had the valve closed and it was. I tried to pump it up again, but as soon as I stopped pumping, the jack began to fall again. This jack was used maybe ten times in one year.

I've purchased a lot of tools at HF for instances where I have a one time or infrequent use for such, but I will never buy another item from them that could prove fatal if it malfunctioned. My last experience with Harbor was with a vibrating sander that fell apart while sanding drywall. It lasted 15 minutes!

 

I've never used floor jack for longer than to get it on stands.

 

I've never used floor jack for longer than to get it on stands.

 

Never depend on any floor jack. Always use jack stands.

 

I always use stands and leave the jack under the car too, if possible. I put abt 90% of the weight on the stands and rest on the jack if I can leave the jack somewhere under the car. Can't be to safe under a car; one incident can cause serious injury, or most likely send u to the morgue.

 

I'm glad that you're able to tell us about your mishap instead of reading about in in the obituaries.

 

I am even worried about some jack stands. Because of this I found twenty two 10" x 10" wood blocks on Craigslist for sale. I bought them all and use four of them per side for holding my car in the air. I used to use cinder blocks but those are not safe either if the mortar in the block cracked out. My wife being from the Philippines was always very worried about me using cinder blocks since she had seen these fail. I also always leave the jack holding about 10% of the weight even with the wood blocks.

 

Me too! I just slid under there for a minute to check the security of the exhaust heat shield. I had the presence of mind to put one of my HD jack stands close to the jack, but had to crawl out and pump the jack an additional stroke to get better access and the stand became unloaded. When the jack failed, the car only came down a small amount until the stand caught it, but it scared the !@#$ out of me.

 

and you would trust a...floor jack...

 

Point taken......

 

Was it this one?
http://t.harborfreight.com/3-ton-st...048.html?utm_referrer=https://www.google.com/

Glad you had the jack stand under there! You never know when taking safety precautions are going to pay off but when they do it kind of puts a lot of things in perspective.

 

Before you used the jack the first time did you bleed the air out of the cylinder? Many don't and it causes problems later on.
Jackstands - many years ago I had a cheap pair that were made out of folded sheet metal that was spot welded, had u-shaped sheet metal saddles welded to the tubes. Real pieces of junk but I didn't know any better. I had them holding up the front of my mother's Chrysler K car while I replaced the steering rack, wheels were off. I had to get out from under the car to get a tool I left on the work bench which was about 6 feet away. I just got to the bench and the car came crashing to the floor! One of the cheesy u-shaped saddles bent and broke a weld causing the jack stand to kick out. 10 seconds sooner and I would have been dead. I went right out and found some of the biggest heavy duty stands I could find, cost no object.

 

Wow, Lesson learned here for many I would guess.

 

No. Mine is yellow and black and does not have the "rapid pump" feature. I thought about repairing it, but my confidence in it is now zero.

Summit has some jacks out on the showroom floor in Akron. I may go over there after Christmas, as I have a $20 coupon that I have to use before the 28th.

 

Do you trust Harbor Freight tools? I bought one of their magnets on the end of telescopic sticks (car antenna) and it broke taking it out of the package.